Discipline in American Civil War Armies

[The Brain]

What does the US constitution mean by "enemies" if they are not at war with the US? Is that like the NY Times and such?

Edit: For clarity, your reading that it doesn't require a war seems odd to me. But I'm not a native speaker.

[Malthus]

BUt the UK would make no such claim, seeing as they just fought a long war and established themselves the right of blockade of belligerents, assuming you can effect it. This isn't something they can just "demand" that the US not enforce, there is international law here, and the US had a declared blockade. Indeed, the fact that the South was NOT officially recognized as a legal entity was somewhat problematic to the legal justification for a blockade.

Recognizing the Confederacy as a actual belligerent and sovereign nation radically *strenthens* the legal argument that the blockade was legitimate, not the other way around!

This is a legal precedent that existed prior to the ACW (Napoleonic Wars most recently), and well after it (WW1 and WW2).

Actually - the Union's position at law was super shaky. If the UK had wanted, it could have declared the Blockade illegal - because it was illegal in a couple of ways!

First, the legality of the blockade rested on a treaty, the Declaration of Paris, that the US had never ratified.

Second, for a blockade to be "legal" under this treaty, it had to be "effective" from the outset ... the Union Blockade was not, as at the outset, the Union lacked ships.

If the blockade wasn't "legal", why did the UK honour it anyway? Basically, out of self-interest: the UK, as the leading navel power, wanted to firmly establish the precedent for its own use:

While Northerners were angered when Britain defined the Confederacy as a belligerent, Southerners were dismayed at Britain's interpretation of the blockade's legal status. This was important because an illegal blockade need not be honored. Importantly, the Declaration outlawed "paper blockades." Nation "A" could not require signatories to honor its blockade of nation "B" if it did not deploy the ships required to block harbor traffic. In terms of the Declaration's language, a blockade could only be legal if it was "effective."

Since the Union initially had few ships to intercept traffic, Lincoln's blockade was undeniably not "effective" for the first year or two. Nonetheless, Great Britain treated it as though it were effective. The reasons for the perplexing interpretation became evident in the ensuing decades.

Great Britain chiefly wanted to establish an international precedent that would benefit her in hypothetical future wars with European powers. Since she intended to maintain a large navy she realized that she was most likely to be the initiator of a future blockade. If so, she wanted to insure that neutrals would honor it. Thus, during the American Civil War Great Britain redefined the concept of an effective blockade.

https://civilwarchat.wordpress.com/2019/04/19/british-reaction-to-lincolns-blockade/comment-page-1/

The point is this: the UK was not compelled by existing legalities to honour the Union blockade. It chose to do so.

Had the calculus of self-interest been different, there was literally nothing stopping the UK from making the above two points ("you aren't a signatory and your blockade isn't effective") and ignoring the blockade -- if the value to the UK of supporting the South outweighed the value to the UK of securing the precedent.

Why would the UK do this? Access to cotton is one big motivator, as is the profits to be made from  selling to a desperate South; plus, if all goes "well", a US stripped of the South is less of a potential future great-power rival.   

Would the North have still won? Certainly, if they fought it out to the end. The UK was never I think going to send an army to the South, which remained absolutely poorer in men and material.

However, the victory would have been a lot more costly if the Northern blockade was broken, making it more plausible that the North would decide the price was just not worth it.

Yeah, if the blockage is your entire justification, that is a non-starter, especially as far as England is concerned. They were the singular global power MOST invested in maintaining the legal precedent that a power can in fact impose a blockade against belligerents.

The value of the precedent to the UK was real enough, but the issue is just how valuable that was to the UK ...

[viper37]

Though how much that support would have been worth is debatable - would the Royal Navy have been willing to break the US blockade? Commit UK troops?

The UK would commit troops if they thought they could gain some States and territory for themselves.  Like any colonial power, basically.  They wouldn't fight for the pretty eyes of the Confederate ladies, nor would they for the cotton when there was a much more affordable opportunity elsewhere.  They wouldn't even fight just to get "even" with the US.

Fear of a US invasion of Canada was a real possibility (it kinda did happen too) and it certainly led to the creation of Canada, because the UK made it clear they couldn't afford to send any significant support over here.

If they couldn't defend their colonies, could they realistically invade the US?  Doubtful, even if they wanted it.  It's not like they had hundreds of thousands of elite troops just sitting idle in England waiting to be shipped out at a moment's notice.

And I don't even know of how the populace and the parliament might have reacted to that thought.

Had they freed their slaves and won at Gettysburg, yeah, maybe the UK would have given some thought to it, but this is all ALT+history as Valmy pointed out.

Would make some interesting novel for sure   The Confederacy evolving into a bastion of liberalism while the North descens into anarchy?  I think I remember something like that

[viper37]

Pretty well my take on it too. Slavery as an issue was a difficult stumbling block for gaining vital UK support. Though how much that support would have been worth is debatable - would the Royal Navy have been willing to break the US blockade? Commit UK troops?

That is one thing I never really understood about the "International recognition" thing. It is stated commonly that it was absolutely critical to the South. And I can see why they would think so, and why they would imagine this scenario where the UK is cominig to their rescue.

They imagined the UK would support them as they were their main cotton trading partner (possibly tobacco too?  IDK).  They also imagined the UK would still be bitter about losing their colonies and would welcome a chance to bruise the US.  That is I believe their line of thought.  Not how the UK saw things, but as any superpower, they would certainly keep an eye on everything affecting nations close to their empire's possessions.

But I would say that a reasonable and objective analysis doesn't really lead to the conclusion that international recognition is the war winning event that is imagined.

If you make a reasonable and objective analysis of the situation in 1861, do you fire on Fort Sumter?

I don't see it - lets say France AND the UK both recognize the legitimacy of the Confederacy. They send ambassadors, and offer to mediate a solution.

So what? Lincoln tells them "Thanks for the mediation offer, but we are not interested". Or sends some negotiating team to Paris to meet with some Confederate reps, with the instructions to not make any deal other than an immediate re-unification (ie just stall).

What is France and the UK going to do? Send an army over? Invade from Canada? Why? What would they stand to gain by doing anything so risky? The North is still the dominate power, and still the dominant trading partner for both of them.

AFAIK, France did not even discuss with the Confederates.  They had friends over there, but no official government contact, like, say the 13 Colonies in 1776.

And France was a mess at the time, and the UK while not a mess certainly didn't have any significant number of troops at the ACW scale to send. They sent what, 60 or 70 thousand troops to the Americas in the War of 1812? The Union was putting half a million to a million men in the field by any point that we could imagine intervention, and could have put more in if they had the threat of foreign invasion to work with - hell, Seward actually *tried* to start a war just to drum up more Northern support for the fight (Yes, that was really stupid, but still).

As for 1812, make it close to half of that.
Official figures put it close to 50k at the end of the war, but they never fielded that much soldiers in a battle.  Lots of troops in garrisons, possibly lots of sailors in the navy, but as much as a fighting force on the ground, it was outnumbered 10:1 by the total number of US troops including the militia.  And I'm couting the 10-15k Indians defending Canada.

I think "foreign intervention" would never have mattered in the long run, and I don't think any European power had any illusions about their ability to intercede militarily.

Yeah, France had no reason to fight the United States and the UK had no capacity to even defend Canada.

Looking at Wikipedia, peak numbers for Unions were close to 700k men and half of that for the Confederacy.  Total manpower for all army branches and support personal was 2,2M and 1M respectively (higher estimate for the Confederacy).

Assuming the US and the UK were roughly at the same technological level (equipment&training), If the UK wanted to intervene, they'd need to mobilize 1M soldiers.  Maybe 5-600k in the field, the rest in support and sailors to fight the US navy.

That force needs to be shipped to Virginia or Canada to make a two prong attack.  Or invade from the Mississipi.  Either way, it meant fighting the US Navy to protect the troop transports, bring enough artillery, gunpowder, replacement weapons & parts, etc...  The South was badly in need of industries to produce what they needed.  Was it a a myth or just an exageration that by the end of the War, i.e. Appomatox, they had no more bullets to fight?  How would they produce food&other supplies for 1M more people without any slaves, central to their economy?  If you want to buy something, you need money.  If your main source of revenue is cotton and you need slaves to extract it since you're not mechanized...  How the heck would it work?  Rehire the slaves?  I think most of them would flee for the Noth in hopes of a better live.  Slaves were worked to death in the fields. It wouldn't change much if they were paid for it.

[viper37]

The UK may well send money their way so they can die in British peoples place.

they did send and loan money to the Confederacy, and help them export their cotton.

[The Minsky Moment]

There is a natural tendency to focus on cotton, but there was another big development in transatlantic trade in the early 1860s - there was an enormous increase in British imports of grain from the northern and western US states.  Europe suffered through some poor harvests in the early 1860s and Britain was both the largest importing nation by far and also the center of the global grain trade.  This was not a temporarily blip either - US grain exports to and through London would be a major feature of the late 19th century trading system.  The other major source of grain imports for Britain was Russia, obviously a problematic source given British foreign policy and interests. 

So at the same time:
1) The CSA shoots itself in the foot with a counter-productive embargo that exposes itself as an unreliable supplier.
2) The UK discovers it is not quite as dependent on southern cotton as believed, b/c of a combination of stockpiled reserves and alternative sources of supply
3)  The USA (North) suddenly emerges as a critical and reliable supplier of a essential commodity for survival.

[Richard Hakluyt]

Impressively the Lancashire cotton workers (often only a meal or two from starving) supported the Union and were against slavery :

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-21057494

"At a mass meeting in Manchester's Free Trade Hall, on New Year's Eve 1862, attended by a mixture of cotton workers, and the Manchester middle class, they passed a motion urging Lincoln to prosecute the war, abolish slavery and supporting the blockade - despite the fact that it was by now causing them to starve. The meeting convened despite an editorial in the Manchester Guardian advising people not to attend.

Mr Lincoln, in a letter dated 19 January 1863, 150 years ago on Saturday, replied with the words that are inscribed on his statue:

"I cannot but regard your decisive utterances on the question as an instance of sublime Christian heroism which has not been surpassed in any age or in any country.

"It is indeed an energetic and re-inspiring assurance of the inherent truth and of the ultimate and universal triumph of justice, humanity and freedom... Whatever misfortune may befall your country or my own, the peace and friendship which now exists between the two nations will be, as it shall be my desire to make them, perpetual." "

[Berkut]

The Civil War and the Japanese jumping into WW2 strike me the exact same way the more I learned about the details behind the economics involved.

WTF were they thinking?

Which them leads me to a very sobering conclusion: Countries, nations, people - they go to war, even *existential* war for often ridiculous reasons that don't make any rational sense.

Someone above asked me if I would rationally fire on Ft. Sumter. Hell no. It was stupid, but that kind of misses the point. The stupid came long before Sumter, just like the Japanese stupid came long before Pearl Harbor.

The stupid starts and puts nations on roads that lead inexorably to disaster long before it is so clear that the only possible end is in fact disaster. By the time that Captain fired the mortar at Ft. Sumter, I don't think anyone could have stopped the war.

Just like by the time the decision was made to attack the US fleet, anyone on the Japanese side could have stopped the war, or chosen some other course. The moment for those decisions had come and gone, and almost certainly at a time when there was no appreciation for what it meant.

[The Minsky Moment]

Supporting the confederacy really made no sense for the UK. No matter what happened, the US (North) would still survive and still thrive as growing industrial power.  What is the upside of causing anger and resentment in such a country, where you also happen to share a long an indefensible land border?  The only sensible policy is the one it actually followed: keep open the threat of recognition to keep the North honest without any real sincere intention of following through.  And it worked - Lincoln was careful not to offend Britain and after the war ended, American elites became increasingly Anglophilic over the following decades.

[Duque de Bragança]

[

AFAIK, France did not even discuss with the Confederates.  They had friends over there, but no official government contact, like, say the 13 Colonies in 1776.

And France was a mess at the time, and the UK while not a mess certainly didn't have any significant number of troops at the ACW scale to send.

France was busy at the time propping up Maximilian in Mexico, precisely thanks to the Guerre de Sécession, ACW in French.

[crazy canuck]

Hard to believe that the presence of an airport (since the revolution) has not been mentioned as a significant factor

[Eddie Teach]

Hard to believe that the presence of an airport (since the revolution) has not been mentioned as a significant factor

Without planes it's just a building and a road.

[mongers]

Supporting the confederacy really made no sense for the UK. No matter what happened, the US (North) would still survive and still thrive as growing industrial power.  What is the upside of causing anger and resentment in such a country, where you also happen to share a long an indefensible land border? The only sensible policy is the one it actually followed: keep open the threat of recognition to keep the North honest without any real sincere intention of following through.  And it worked - Lincoln was careful not to offend Britain and after the war ended, American elites became increasingly Anglophilic over the following decades.

Could you imagine our next PM being able to follow such a carefully balanced foreign policy? 

[PDH]

Or the current US president?

[mongers]

Or the current US president?

Indeed.

Sorry times we live in.